Are liberals just conservatives...

Who have made some money? Will Wilkinson, who normally thinks about three levels above me does a wonderful job of drawing together some current research on our "default" values and how they change. Please read the whole post, but here is the set-up:

University of Virginia professor of psychology Jonathan Haidt is a pioneer in the scientific study of moral emotion and cognition. Haidt’s principal claim to fame is his “five foundations” theory of human morality. Imagine a graphic equalizer on a stereo with five separate settings that slide up and down. One setting determines our sensitivity to suffering and harm. One calibrates our sense of reciprocity and fairness. Another fixes our degree of in-group loyalty, and establishes how inclusively we draw the circle around those we consider one of “us”. Still another concerns our attitudes toward authority and the duties of our station. And then there is our “spiritual” sense of the sacred and the profane. Recently, Haidt has entertained the possibility of a sixth slide on the moral equalizer determining our attunement to matters of individual autonomy and freedom, but we’ll stick with just the five for now.The elegant basic idea is that variation along a small number of universal dimensions of emotion and cognition can account for the entire stunning range of human morality. Afghani herdsmen and American animal rights activists surely disagree about a lot, morally speaking. But their respective cultures draw from the same fund of psychological resources to construct each of their deeply-felt, guiding moralities. We all have the same basic moral equalizer. We just differ in our settings.Among Haidt’s most provocative findings is that American liberals and conservative differ systematically in the calibration of their moral equalizers. Liberals have harm and fairness (Haidt calls these the “individualizing foundations”) pushed way up and in-group, authority,and purity (the “binding foundations”) pushed way down. In contrast, conservatives have all the slides pushed up, though their individualizing settings are not set as high as are liberals’.Haidt has tended to characterize conservative morality, resting on as it does on all five moral foundations, as more complex or in some sense full-bodied than liberal morality, which rests almost entirely on just the two individualizing foundations. Haidt argues that traditional moralities, like contemporary conservative morality, tended to have all the settings on the moral equalizer turned up relatively high, and he describes the process by which we have arrived at liberal morality, with everything butfairness and harm turned down, as “the great narrowing.”

But he goes on to touch on the puzzle of my own value evolution and shed great light on why we are not guided by the same morality over our whole lives. It may be that prosperity, or at least less stress over wealth and material well-being frees us up to tweak our values.

In other words, as the threat of economic insecurity and its concomitant zero-sum conflict over resources recedes with the rise of material prosperity, the defensive binding foundations also recede, leaving the rising generation with a moral equalizer on which in-group, authority, and purity have never been turned up, making fairness and harmrelatively more salient. Now, toss in Inglehart’s Maslovianism. As our material needs are met, higher-order needs of consciousness become more pressing. So, at the point in development in which a generation is struck by the “postmaterialist” impulse to seek meaning through moral activity, it finds itself with a historically relatively liberal morality preoccupied with distributive fairness, the reduction of suffering (and, I think, autonomy). In the quest for meaning-making, postmaterialist generations latch onto and refine these moral sensibilities, further raising their salience relative to the binding foundations. Haidt’s “great narrowing” follows from the “great cushioning” of rising prosperity. Of course, as soon as, say, a recession hits, the defensive binding foundations kick in a bit, and a bunch of us buy bald-eagle t-shirts and get mad at about immigrants stealing our jobs.

But here's the catch for grain farmers: we cannot escape the zero-sum aspect of our work. There are only so many acres, and if I farm them, you don't. Now add in the added insecurity over tenure (land rental) we have developed though increasing transparent cash rental markets, and it is small wonder farmers poll as very conservative. We do not operate in a world where we can ever back off our conservative settings, or at least until we own enough land to make us effectively invulnerable to rent predators. [I define that as able to survive comfortably on just what we own]

This would help to explain why grain farmers, in the midst of the biggest boom in US history for their sector of ag, have high disapproval ratings for Pres. Obama. This has mystified me, since in addition to making oodles of money (as compared to say, Reagan) Obama has defended ethanol, GMOs, and generally been less eager to slash the ag budget. I think there is a considerable racial element as well (judging by the jokes I hear), but clearly we are not voting our wallets. We are voting our perceived insecurity.

This really strikes home with me. It seems logical that my changing views about inequality and social well-being are luxuries I could only afford very recently. In addition, the zero-sum aspect of our work is a bigger clamp on our moral outlook than I ever imagined.

At any rate, Will's writing is first-rate, and his logic is impeccable. Highly recommended.

[You may need to read some of it 2-3 times. DAMHIKT.]

OK, it's alive!...

We get it.  The announcement of synthetic life (the jury is still out on this label) by bioengineering pioneer Craig Ventner has sparked more intensity in a debate already in long in progress.

[So before we go any further, the monster was not named Frankenstein. His name was The Monster.]

Having cleared up that particular personal obsession, what does this tiny little dot of bioengineering amount to anyway?

The experiment involved creating a strand of DNA as specified by a computer in a sequencing machine, and inserting it into a dead cell of M. capricolum, and then watching it revivify and express the artificial markers and the M. mycoides proteins. It really is like bringing the dead back to life.
It was also a lot more difficult than stitching together corpses and zapping it with lightning bolts. The DNA in this cell is over one million bases long, and it all had to be assembled appropriately with a sequencing machine. That was the first tricky part; current machines can't build DNA strands that long. They could coax sequences about a thousand nucleotides long out of the machines.
Then what they had to do was splice over a thousand of these short pieces into a complete bacterial chromosome. This was done with a combination of enzymatic reactions in a test tube, and in vivo assembly by recombination inside yeast cells. The end result is a circular bacterial chromosome that is, in its sequence, almost entirely the M. mycoides genome…but made from a sequence stored in a computer rather than a parental bacterium.
Finally, there was one more hurdle to overcome, getting this large loop of DNA into the husk of a cell. These techniques, at least, had been worked out last year in experiments in which they had transplanted natural M. mycoides chromosomes into bacteria.
The end result is a new, functioning, replicating cell. One could argue that it isn't entirely artificial yet, since the artificial DNA is being placed in a cell of natural origin…but give it time. The turnover of lipids and proteins and such in the cytoplasm in the membrane means that within 30 generations all of the organism will have been effectively replaced, anyway. [More]

And that was the simplest explanation I read, just for the record. (Yet another reason I avoided life-sciences).  I think it is a very, very big deal, and will eventually find its way into the realm of politics, albeit too late to really affect an explosion in innovation in synthetic life.  See also: GM crops. In fact, I'm still waiting for farmers to discover what Tea Partiers think about GMOs right now.  Throw in folks with religious objections to GMOs and you could throw a real wrench in "small government" politics.  The only way to stop this is more government regulation, right?

But this new field of creation or manipulation of living material hints at some real possibilities that could show up on the farm.

Synthetic biology, as the field of man-made biological components such as Venter's is called, is a promising new field that raises as much concern as it does excitement. It's basically genetic engineering writ on a larger, more profoundly amped-up scale. That process could generate valuable new species that can produce vast amounts of much-needed food or pharmaceutical products, and Venter is already at work on such projects. Collaborating with Novartis, he is building a bank of man-made versions of every known influenza strain so that if a new strain, such as H1N1, begins to circulate during flu season, vaccine makers can simply pull the appropriate synthetic segments off the shelf and begin the vaccine making process, cutting the months-long job of sequencing the appropriate strain down to a single day.
Working with Exxon, Venter's team is investigating ways to harness algae to convert carbon dioxide into a hydrocarbon source for biofuel on a scale that would finally make such alternative energy options worth pursuing. "No natural algae we know would do this on the scale needed," he says. "So we have to use a synthetic genome technique to either heavily modify existing algae or devise whole new ones." And the same strategy can be used to build organisms that can clean up pathogens in water or boost nutritional content in foods such as wheat crops. [More]

Regardless of the marketable products that emerge from this research I think corn (maize) will be an easy choice for acting as a vector or host if possible.  Having a long history of similar genetic modification, public and professional resistance would likely be lowest. With millions of acres - often wall-to-wall, isolation or at least dilution could be more feasible.  And our industry certainly has the infrastructure (plenty of white lab coats, etc.) to support such breeding.

I am not talking about the over-ballyhooed "farmaceuticals".  If Big Pharma develops say, a cancer vaccine grown in soybeans they are not going to pay a farmer to grow it on land rented from someone else.  Extremely high value crops will be grown on company owned land by company employees.

But it could be some other bug or biological product could be extracted during the corn milling process, for example and have a large enough market to prompt interest in the millions of acres of corn that could be doing double duty.  This is wild speculation, but I think the premise is sound. The end product must be something compatible with commodity production for any dollars to be showing up in our pockets.

At the very least, the idea of synthetic life sliding from science fiction to newspapers is to be noted.

[Update: Carl Zimmer has added his own commonplace brilliant touch to this story, noting that the minute the cell was formed, evolution took over and began to reshape it.

The scientists who produced the new synthetic cell copied the genome of a microbe, letter for letter, and then inserted the synthetic version into a host cell. To determine that their experiment worked, they needed a way to tell the genomes of their synthetic cells from the natural genomes that were their model. So they inserted “watermarks” into the artificial genome. These sequences of DNA (which spelled out the work of Joyce and others through the genetic code) sit in non-coding regions of the microbe’s DNA. As a result, these watermarks cannot disrupt any essential protein-coding genes or stretches of DNA that are vital for switching genes on and off.
It turns out that the genome of the synthetic cell is not identical to its original, even if you ignore the watermarks. Mutations slipped into its sequence during its synthesis. Yet those mutations caused no harm to the microbe, presumably because they didn’t disrupt an essential function encoded in its DNA. Once the synthetic cell came to life and began to grow and divide, it copied its entire DNA, including Joyce’s words. But as lovely as those words may be, and as important as they may have been to the scientists during their experiment, they mean nothing to the microbe. Every time an organism replicates, each spot in its DNA has a tiny chance of mutating.
In the growing colony of synthetic cells, now numbering in the billions, it’s almost certain that Joyce’s watermark has already been defaced by a mutation. The bacteria that carry these degraded versions of Joyce presumably do not suffer from these mutations, since the watermarks don’t matter to them anyway. So they can keep replicating.By contrast, the DNA in the really useful parts of their genome is changing very little over the generations, thanks to selection. [More]

Like glyphosate resistance, the implacable forces of evolution keep us changing and moving toward a future to be chosen by the rules we uncover through research such as this.]

I'm doing business outside...

From now on.

Economists use a game of trust to reveal our moral intuitions. Person A and Person B are both given £12. Person A is the depositor, Person B the trustee. Person A can choose how much to deposit with Person B: nothing, £4, £8 or £12. When the money is transferred it immediately triples in value. Thus, if Person A gives Person B £8, she is left with £4, while Person B now has 3×8 + 12 = £36. Person B can then choose to give as much back to Person A as he thinks appropriate. If he were to give back £20, say, he would still be left with more than he began. But he could hand over all £36 or nothing at all.

This game has been used to show that humans are not entirely rationally self-interested. But for our purposes what is interesting is this: when subjects are given the hormone oxytocin they are more likely to hand over a larger share of their money, exhibiting greater trust that the other person will treat them fairly. Boosting oxytocin levels is not a high-tech procedure; the hormone can be delivered by nasal spray. Trust is central to our personal and business relationships, and altering trust levels could alter society in a profound way.  Enhancement is not identical to improvement. Pumping oxytocin through the air-conditioning could be used for less noble purposes: companies manipulating their consumers, politicians their voters, or predatory men their dates. [More] [My emphasis]

We think stuff like this is way in the future, but I'm not so sure.  One possible consequence of health cost reform and lower drug profits could be the intensified search for non-medical markets.  Enhancement would seem to be a logical area to add revenues.

Technology outpaces our morality again...

Just to throw a new wrinkle into the animal rights/industrial agriculture debate consider the possibilities of animals genetically modified to tolerate industrial production methods. What if we could breed animals indifferent to pain?

"If we can't do away with factory farming, we should at least take steps to minimise the amount of suffering that is caused," says Adam Shriver, a philosopher at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. In a provocative paper published this month, Shriver contends that genetically engineered pain-free animals are the most acceptable alternative (Neuroethics, DOI: 10.1007/s12152-009-9048-6). "I'm offering a solution where you could still eat meat but avoid animal suffering."

Humans consume nearly 300 million tonnes of meat each year. Our appetite for flesh has risen by 50 per cent since the 1960s, and the trend looks set to continue. Most of this will likely come from factory farms, notorious for cramped quarters and ill treatment of animals. Battery farm chickens, for instance, routinely have part of their beaks removed without anaesthetic or pain relief to prevent them from pecking their neighbours.

Progress in understanding and manipulating the molecular and genetic bases for pain means ethics and economics, not technical feasibility, may end up determining whether Shriver's proposal becomes a reality. [More]

This is not as far-fetched as it may seem, and I'm not sure I oppose it. Reducing the stress and pain in food animals is not a bad thing.  Nor is genetic modification greatly removed from the slower inbreeding for similar traits like docility.

The larger issue for many is a relative value framework, I think.

This doesn't mean we should welcome the creation of pain-free animals, though. The reason we find the idea so disquieting is that it runs counter to our visceral sense of right and wrong. This is known as the "yuck factor" and it is a common reaction to advances in biotechnology and biomedicine such as cloning, genetic modification and human-animal chimeras.

Some conservative commentators argue that the yuck factor is a reliable indicator that a moral Rubicon has been crossed. Yet all too often such distaste is irrational and a barrier to progress. Progressive thought often comes from ignoring such reactions and thinking things through logically instead.

In this case, however, there is value in the yuck factor. Yes, logically speaking, pain-free animals make sense. But only in a world that has already devalued animal lives to the point where factory farming is acceptable. Our visceral reaction to pain-free animals is actually a displaced reaction against the system that makes them necessary. [More]

Such statements seem sound in the moment, but my feeling is we adapt much faster and more completely to such ethical puzzles than we expect.  Consider how we embraced artificial insemination, for example.  Once scorned by traditionalists, today few livestock of commercial value breed naturally.

"Yuck" has a short half-life, in other words.  

I don't think we have heard the last of this one.

Fewer farmers = harsher competition?...

As I sat in a meeting recently with mostly younger farmers (but then aren't they all these days?), they seemed to agree upon the idea that the level of competitiveness is much higher today, which has lowered what they considered ethical business standards.

I demurred.  The stories from my early days, and stories my father told me suggested older farmers were simply less obvious, and without cash rent transparency, the competitive level was harder to document.

But maybe their perceptions were closer to the truth of the matter.

Imagine that you're taking a test in a large public hall. Obviously, your knowledge and confidence will determine your score, but could the number of people around you have an influence too? According to psychologists Stephen Garcia from the University of Michigan and Avishalom Tor from the University of Haifa, the answer is yes. They have found that our motivation to compete falls as the number of competitors rises, even if the chances of success are the same.
The simple act of comparing yourself against someone else can stoke the fires of competition. When there are just a few competitors around, making such comparisons is easy but they become more difficult when challengers are plentiful. As a result, the presence of extra contenders, far from spurring us on by adding extra challenge, can actually have the opposite effect. Garcia and Avishalom call this the "N-effect" and they demonstrated it through a number of experiments. [More]

To be sure the headcount dwindles, but I also think the non-local nature of so much land competition (widespread operations) affects practices even more.  In other words, competing against a neighbor at least prompts some concerns over long term consequences of having to live together.  Competing against a guy two counties over doesn't make that issue seem too relevant, IMHO. 

Animal agriculture all comes down...

To the essential fact of humans controlling the lives (and deaths) of animals.  There are important degrees of severity involved, but to expect to find a clever solution to the fundamental outcome of our predator/prey relationship is hardly rational.

But with Iberico production, even this trade-off is not as clear as it might seem. Iberico pigs actually spend the first nine months of their lives in confinement. Granted, it's not factory-farm confinement—they've got some room to move and all-natural feed to eat, nor are they docked or clipped. But the promoted benefits of free-range are absent—no sun, no freshly fallen acorns, no wallowing in big mud pits. While indoors, they're castrated, spayed, kept to a feeding schedule, administered antibiotics when sick, directed to eat and sleep in carefully chosen locations, and, just before the barn doors open to the freedom of la dehesa, mutilated with a nose ring.

As responsible consumers, it's easy to decide to avoid factory-farmed pork. The hard part is what to make of the most acceptable alternative. Does free-range farming justify the mutilation that's often required to keep pigs outdoors? As an ethical matter, the question is open to endless debate. What the conscientious meat eater can take away from it is not so much a concrete answer as a more nuanced way to think about our food choices. In this age of deeply convincing attacks on factory farms, consumers must be careful not to immediately assume that every alternative to factory farming is as "all natural" or humane as its advocates will inevitably declare. The alternatives might require still more alternatives. [More]

Engineers are the poster-children for this problem, but as long as we consider moral end ethical teaching to be a egghead sideline of university educations, we will continue to be troubled by our choices and our society more than perhaps is necessary.

A refresher course in better learning...




[Link]

Not good just for the paranormal, but also for policy, economics, ethics, biotech...

Long answers...

Are perhaps my only true talent.

A reader poses this challenge:

 I always enjoy your perspective on the trials and tribulations of modern production agriculture. I thought your piece on honoring cash rent agreements was insightful and now would like to hear what you have to say about taking it to the next level and commenting on Greg Vincent's piece about "the ask" in the latest issue. Many have a double standard when they see their sweet heart rental deals threatened by the aggressive expansionist, yet have few qualms about letting a land lord know how much better they could do in today's market. Think you can navigate that one?

In a sense, I have to navigate it - I'm living it.  He refers to an editorial by Greg Vincent, the editor of Top Producer which refers back to the occasion of the Top Producer Seminar.  In part, this is Greg's view:

"I decided about three years ago my job was to ask,” said Richter, who farms about 7,500 acres with his brother and another partner. “I don’t say I’ll give you X amount, but I tell landowners what we do. I tell them what information they’ll receive from us. I ask that if they ever think about changing renters, to please think of us. You’ve got to at least let people know you’re interested.”

“I don’t think it’s unethical to ask,” Lasley said. “Now, I do think there are times when it may be inappropriate to ask.”

Joking while making a point, Richter responded, “Is that before or after the wake?”

I believe most agree that preying on landowners at a funeral, which has been done before, is not acceptable. But simply asking? Even that crosses the line in some people’s minds. Others are conflicted because they want to grow, but feel they can’t and still be a good citizen of the community. This was something the panelists understood, but didn’t feel was that difficult to balance.

“Why would it be bad? And maybe that’s the obvious question,” Spafford pointed out. “I’m not sure who gets upset at the ask. The landlord couldn’t be upset at the ask. But why would the current renter get upset? Is it because he’s paying under the market rate?

“I may be throwing stones out there, and that’s not the intent,” he added. “But maybe the obvious question is: If we’re upset because we’re paying under a market rate, maybe the ask doesn’t matter, because now who’s not being ethical?”

Is it simply that those who are threatened by farm growth and who are making accusations of unethical behavior are actually living in glass houses? Or is farming immune from business reality? [More]

This topic is going to be beaten to death while consolidation proceeds apace for several reasons that underlie the issue rather than the issue itself. So get comfortable - I'm going in.

First, issues of competition should be examined with respect to the cultural atmosphere of the community in which each particular acres is located.  I have blithered on at length between the different points of view of Yankee and Yeoman farming cultures, but a brief recap.

• Yankee farmers tend to be descended from Anglo - American stock(British, Scot, Irish).  Not always but often.  They are several generations in this country and carry in them some internalized values: more libertarian outlook (individual rights are very important), less inter-generational responsibility beyond those necessary for raising children, less tendency to form coops, strong belief in laws over traditions, high activity in government and legal systems, less exclusive communities (strangers are people too), comfortable as traders and dealers as well as producers, and seem to have a stronger attraction to risk. Land ownership is not a mandatory virtue, and remaining in one place not absolutely critical.
  
• Yeoman farmers tend to be more recent arrivals and hence are more numerous from Illinois westward.  The come from Northern Europe and Scandanavia, and often immigrated en masse to establish entire towns from one area. Their attachment to land and community is stronger, as are the filial duties in families (getting sons established in farming, and caring for aging parents, for example).  They have tended to be more patriarchical and less likely to encourage women to own and operate farms. They have a stronger sense of community and cooperation, designating individual rights a lower priority. They are more exclusive, both within families and communities (land should not leave either, as a rule).  As later arrivals who kept their native tongues until about WWII, they were in a poor position to participate in the establishment of the legal and legislative system and frequently chose to avoid both.  As a result, US law does not reflect their values as much as Yankees.

So when talking about how competition should work in farm communities, check the plat book first for last names. If they look like "Phipps", you're in a Yankee county; if you have to check how to spell them, you are more likely in Yeoman country.  Then refer back to the tendencies to get some perspective on where folks are "coming from".

Within each neighborhood, relationships also hinged on, oddly enough, church attendance. Since Yeoman communities tended to have one large Catholic/Lutheran church, discord within the congregation was avoided and even occasionally a matter for the clergy to ajudicate.  In Yankee communities with a flock of Protestant churches, disagreement between local farmers was less concerning - "What can you expect from a Methodist/Baptist/etc.?"  But the larger point, I think is that the ruling from the church body carried the weight of autority and hence a sense of a "right" answer more often is sought, and used as precedent in Yeoman communities.

Which brings us to absolutism. [Legalism].  Consider the questions outlined by Greg and frequently heard in farmer discussions. Most of them arise from strong aversion to tackling these increasingly common issues of ethical behavior on their own merits, case-by-case, without detailed moral or religious guidance.  If only there was an Eleventh Commandment to quote, these headaches would end!

But the question is elusively relativistic, I believe.  Within broad outlines of moral conduct that apply to all people, we have to apply our value system each time and rebalance the good and bad; costs and benefits.  (Of course, this could simply be the Yankee in me talking.) Some of us create some guidelines to prevent covering the same arguments again and again, but even these are subject to revision as the world and people change.

For me, the question is almost one of physics, rooted in time and space.

The first is time.  The old canard about funeral home behavior is a dated issue. The conversations to rent ground are best initiated years, even decades earlier.  My experience is farmers without long range plans are the ones who resort to unfortunate last second actions, whereas those who are committed to be farming (or their descendants) are constantly sowing local seeds of reminders of interest in the land. When you speak is as important as what you say, and can even be game-deciding.  My rule of thumb: you can't be too early.

But what form should this conversation take?  Subject to community tradition (although my guess is Yankee standards are dominating competition practice) certainly numbers could be used, but that can be counterproductive in the long run. Those who live by the high bid, lose by it as well.  But at the same time, the attitude that the local competitor should be given a break is poor logic.  The local should value the land more and bid higher.

Another tactic could be a refusal to name a figure unless it will be considered a legitimate bid that could lead to actually renting the farm. Otherwise, you are simply doing an appraiser's job for free, and escalating a neighbor's rent for what resembles spite alone.

But more important, IMHO is the factor of space (location). Imagine a ring of concentric circles centered on your farm. As you journey outward, you decrease geometrically the power of your personal reputation and connections.  After all, those closest to you have lived with (put up with) you the longest. In fact, I consider the ruckus over aggressive cash-renters to be about 75% caused by simple displacement.

This feeling could arise from the deeply ingrained agrarian principle of farming as a "rooted" occupation, and our exploitation of that image for subsidies. The image we choose to offer even today is of a localized producer.  Until we decide to face the non-farm world as we are, we will continue to struggle to balance our widespread operations with our homey PR feint.  Too often we don't even realize this self-deception is what gets up our nose when a farmer three counties over moves into farm next door.  We really buy into our own spin.

Even the comment that you can't rent ground close betrays the fact that among those who know you best, you are less persuasive than strangers.  This too strikes me as short-term (less than 20 years) planning.  Besides our instinctive reverence for contiguous (or at least nearby) land is so universal, even competitors will grudgingly admit at least understanding your aggressiveness to rent it.  In short, distance alters the expectations of conduct.  It is my impression that producers have discovered acting like a jerk far from homw is not as bad as pulling the same shenanigans at home.The power of shame diminishes with distance as well.  This is a golden opportunity for favorable comparison by locals, it seems to me.

Most astounding to me are neighbors who will resent a rental coup by one to the extent they would prefer an outsider whom they both can despise. Now that's a strategy!

The "ask" could be a common part of prospective conversations are between neighbors who have many discussions, and who in the course of normal communication will touch on business matters.  Especially if couched in terms of a succeeding generation (my son may be farming and...) few will condemn the ethics of laying our your hopes for a future for your farm.  But this grace should not be expected to extend beyond your immediate community.

There is a moral proximity premium. But it can be negated by poor choices with your landowners. If you do not establish a framework of operation that can withstand competition from the outside or even the consequences of terms reached with other landowners, the personal good will you have established can evaporate, only to be recovered with enormous effort and time.

More than that, I have always suspected we undervalue farming close under the pressure to farm large.  Size is lionized on magazine covers, I know. But the subtle grip ACRES alone can have on your thought processes too often skews our value decisions. Nonetheless, BTO's exist because we as a profession allow them to, whether by refusing to invest in land (following some extremely bogus financial advice in the 80's) or by astonishing insensitivity to landowner goals or by a sense of entitlement via family or residence.

In fact, if your gripe is some yahoo from across the state (or even county) can rent ground next to you, it is your business model that needs upgrading - not his. Simple proximity should add $40-50 from efficiency alone (fewer miles, central storage, larger fields,etc.)  Personal reputation should clinch the deal.

Even the argument of "subsidized" bidders is groundless.  Outside sources of income are not only fair, but dang effective.  The question is better framed, "Which renter wants to farm more - the one who will work off-farm or devote personal wealth, or the one expects a "decent profit"? Farmers have long since learned to quietly leave unmentioned a wife's salary that effectively subsidizes the farm when complaining about competitors with "outside money".  Until you find a way to legislate how individuals deploy their own wealth which - despite incessant jeremiads of "looming socialism" - would require more than few revisions to the Constitution, the right to farm for nothing is still inviolable.

Much of the antagonism is rooted in sheer intimidation by size.  This too is bogus, as even economies of scale cannot overcome vibrant, living personal ties.  In my opinion, few people ever rent ground away from satisfied landowners. But big guys just make us crazy because down deep we want to be one.  So we create a stereotype that often doesn't match reality.  Consider this thoughtful message I got recently referring to an earlier post:

I enjoy reading your "incoming" blog everyday, your posts are always insightful and interesting.  As a professional farmer and a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints I was particularly interested in your recent post about "large corporate farms".  Your mention of the Mormon church as the largest agricultural operation in the US is to my knowledge correct.  I live and farm adjacent to one such welfare farm here in XXXX, I sometimes contribute time and labor, I also have a younger brother employed on a church owned farm in another state.  Because of my background I thought I could add some additional information if you have any interest.  The Wikipedia articles linked about the church farms and bishop's storehouses are substantially accurate.  In addition to the welfare system farms mentioned, the church owns several large operations in the US and internationally operated under the name "Ag Reserves Inc."  These operations, (one of which employs my brother) are operated for profit and pay taxes as any other company would.  Neither type of farm accepts USDA subsidy payments.  The stated purpose of the Ag Reserves unit is implied by its name, to hold and improve ag properties until which time their production may be needed to supplement the existing demand on the current welfare system.  The church does not typically publicize it's holdings, but a general outline of the purpose and scope of the system is not meant to be "top secret" either.

I have managed a small irrigated operation raising alfalfa, wheat, and corn for 15 years and provided for my family on all rented land.  I recognize many would say I am disadvantaged as compared to any large farm operation.  I strongly disagree.  I literally farm across the fence from the largest farm operation in the US and voluntarily tithe my income to contribute to their expansion, yet I don't fear their competitive advantage or anyone else's for that matter.  The church farms are remarkably well managed and I am aware of some of their advantages, (I wish I could get the same volume refund on new JD equipment they have arranged with Deere after they purchase from the local dealer for example).  Certainly there is such a thing as economies of scale, but there are also competitive advantages I have that don't transfer to large operations.  I am proud of my industry but I am disappointed in our frequent crying foul at anyone we think is too big.  The big guys face the same challenges I do with two more zeros.  

The zero-sum nature of farming has been long denied even as it was obvious to all in the profession. We have very few frontiers to expand, although global warming could change that somewhat. Coupled with the need for very few farms as we deploy enormously powerful technology, a tiny handful of industrial producers will dominate grain farming just as has occurred with livestock and other ag sectors.

One skill these operators seem to have in common may be an ability to express their ambitions in a way that dovetails with the hopes and dreams of those they seek to serve.  And if you have not caught on the the fact that grain farming is a service industry, you're already way behind the curve.

If you are competitive today, it is risky to bet your continued success on outside forces like tradition or professional ethics.  One really good reason is we have no "professional ethics".  Not necessarily because we are all scoundrels, but because farmers refuse to accept any of the responsibilities incumbent with a true profession.

When I suggested licensing farmers, I was well and truly battered by incensed farmers protesting regulations and interference.  But in order to address the tumult of what professional conduct should be and propagate a "Code of the Midwest" (whatever), producers must first of all be  willing to abide by professional standards.  In short, if you think competitors are behaving badly, you too must agree to the same standards of ethical behavior you want to impose on them.  We can have a street fight or an association meeting, but not both.

If we want ethical professional behavior, we need to 1) agree on what that entails and write it down, and 2) raise our hands and swear to abide by them.

Or we can keep pointing out the mote in our brother's eye.

And (literally) losing ground.

Making our own myths...

I just finished another one of the Great Courses: Classical Mythology delivered by Elizabeth Vandiver.

Verdict: Outstanding, right up there with the Middle Ages and Vikings.

The professor was both articulate and very engaging, and left me wanting to take her next course. But aside from recommending this choice, I wanted to share a big "aha" moment at the end.

After carefully explaining what myths have meant to civilization, Vandiver saves a surprise ending for the last few minutes.  Proceeding from her initial definition of myths as "stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that embody our deepest fears and greatest aspirations and hopes" [my version] she asks the question why we don't have myths to fall back upon today.

While some would place religion (even Christianity) in this category, for the most part myths about an earlier time simply don't work well any more.  We know too much about the past, we have too much science to disprove fantastic stories, and we have becomes used to thinking the future will be the "Golden Age" instead of a period lost in the mists of time.

Her surprising suggestion was modern myths face forward into the future, since we are capable of imagining fantastic circumstances and heroes in the future.  In short, sci-fi may be our equivalent body of myth.  She particularly singles out Star Trek for several reasons.

The folks on Star Trek are obviously related to us, possess extraordinary powers, and engage in adventures that illustrate what we hope and fear right now. They are our Heracles (Hercules) and Zeus, so to speak.

This rings true for me, and helps me to understand how powerful I find the idea of myth in the example of Star Trek. Such stories help shape our moral and ethical belief system more subtly and thoroughly than I think we suspect.  Indeed, one STNG episode even explores the idea of a civilization that communicates primarily by mythical metaphors.

In an amazing coincidence, I also stumbled across a fascinating essay about the "Christianizing" of modern sci-fi/fantasy that also seems plausible. While the Christ-theme is obvious in the Narnia series, consider other popular stories.

Both The Matrix and Superman Returns show the hero’s discovery of his powers. We see Neo learning martial arts almost instantaneously through the cable leading to his brain—a computer nerd’s fantasy; in a euphoric flashback, we watch the young Clark Kent finding out that he can fly. No parallels to these episodes of joyful self-discovery exist in the New Testament. But turn your attention from the canonical Bible to the Apocrypha—in particular, to the Gospel of Thomas, one of the so-called Infancy Gospels, stories of Jesus’s childhood nearly 2,000 years old—and you’ll find the child Jesus animating clay sparrows, restoring people to life, and even exacting revenge on his enemies. “He was again passing through the village,” the text relates, “and a boy ran up against Him, and struck His shoulder. And Jesus was angry, and said to him: You shall not go back the way you came. And immediately he fell down dead.”
If that last story sounds vaguely familiar, maybe you’re one of the millions around the world who have read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997), the first installment in J. K. Rowling’s unprecedentedly successful seven-volume series of fantasy novels, the first five of which have been made into blockbuster movies. Early on in The Sorcerer’s Stone, before Harry discovers his magical powers, his loutish cousin Dudley punches him in the ribs during a visit to the zoo. Unconsciously, an angry Harry makes the glass separating Dudley from a boa constrictor disappear. We soon learn that Harry, like so many of today’s fantasy heroes, is marked for greatness from infancy as the only person who can defeat a world-crushing evil. The final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Interminable Sequels—no, wait, that’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—has Harry (you guessed it) choosing to die to save the world and then returning to life, after a brief journey to an afterworld resembling (note the place) London’s King’s Cross railway station.

One reason that Disney finally made a movie out of C. S. Lewis’s Christian allegory The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005 may be that popular fantasy has become increasingly religious at heart. Peter Jackson’s brilliant film adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, on the other hand, probably don’t fall into the category of messianic fantasy, despite a quick episode in which the wizard Gandalf experiences a sort of death and rebirth; Tolkien’s chief inspiration was political, not religious, and Jackson remains faithful to that intention. [More]

In a time where we seem to be questioning our entire modern moral social structure, we could do worse than read more science fiction, I have decided. As brain researchers have pointed out (more on this later) even occasionally thinking about stories that depict moral actions - whether it's Christ in the Temple or Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan - predisposes us to better and more moral actions.

We need stories and myths, and we need to tell them often to ourselves and children if we are to preserve the values we profess to treasure. Arguing about which particular myth is "right" misses the point and power of this ancient cultural tool.

Non-relational transactions...

As someone who really likes using Amazon, self-checkout lanes and pay-at-the-pump, I have to take responsibility for some of the loss of community in America.  At least, that's one way of looking at it.

This story got me thinking about the demand for non-relational contracting. Ian MacNeil, my former colleague at Northwestern, was famous for claiming that most contracting is “relational” — or extends the duty to perform contracts through time and repeated transactions. But Sheen’s (possibly apocryphal) quotation has me thinking that there may be contexts in which people would pay a premium to avoid a relationship.
Some people may at times prefer A.T.M.’s to tellers in part because they don’t want to speak to tellers. Some people may prefer Merry Maids to a regular housekeeper (or may prefer to be absent when the cleaning is done). Or some people may prefer buying at Amazon.com in part because of the lack of human contact.
Indeed, what’s scariest to me as a professor is that part of the student demand for “distance learning” may come from students who don’t want to have relationships with their teachers.
A rising demand for non-relational contracting seems of a piece with Robert Putnam’s depressing Bowling Alone thesis that we are becoming increasingly disconnected from family, friends, and neighbors. I remember the day when you might have had a conversation with the person sitting next to you on an airplane. Nowadays, if you say more than a perfunctory hello when you initially sit down, you are trespassing into your seatmate’s personal space.
Of course, there are other ways to spin the demand for non-relational contracting. Restricting and regulating our contractual relationships allows us to control and concentrate our limited relationship energy on those people who matter most to us. Surely this is sometimes the case. But conserving our limited relationship energy may backfire. Our capacity to interact with others may atrophy if it goes unused.

Moreover, some of us may be healthiest and happiest when we interact with a variety of people on a variety of levels; it may not be good for us to concentrate all of our social energy on the most intense or important relationships in our lives. [More]

Much of this change in commerce carries over to the angst and anger now seething in what was once an previously placid (on the surface, at least) arena of land rental.  My latest column may not help calm the waters either, but it fairly represents my thinking.

Farmers are getting a first-hand look at what transparency means: doing business in broad daylight.  Formerly, ties of kinship and/or friendship greased the skids for land rentals, since the deal (50/50) was pretty much the same for everybody.  It was like the old Soviet Union, where the lack of market economy produced a market for influence.

As long as you were part of the group that controlled land, this was a pretty harmonious arrangment, but it was hard on outsiders or newcomers.  As labor has become less important compared to acres, the need for more acres meant dealing with more people than were inside the groups, and thus began the effort to extend "old-group" rules to people who were not part of the old group.

Many landowners - especially investors - decided to try another approach: open dealing with interested parties.  It turns out many business models embraced by farmers don't withstand close public scrutiny.

The result is a startling mix of self-righteous judgment [I could not help but note the absence of any mention of the Golden Rule in these religious opinions] and a drift toward non-relational contracting. 

What few seem to suspect is the emergence of competitors who can operate at several levels of engagement - purely financial to high-relationship transactions - as the situation warrants instead of imposing one standard on all.  This, I believe will be the mark of the next level of farm entrepreneurs.

How 'bout those egg prices?...

Every now and then I see a trend with long term implications I am reluctant to contemplate.

That $100,000 seems like a large sum of money for human eggs today. But suppose that choosing the right egg results in a smarter child with a responsible, calm, and motivated disposition. The boost in life time income could be many times that initial $100,000 investment.

The value from choosing "premium" eggs will soar as plummeting costs of DNA sequencing technologies bring about an explosion of discoveries about genetic variations for controlling intelligence and personality. The ability to choose between eggs based on detailed genetic profile of donors will greatly increase the probability of getting some desired genetic outcome.

The initial genetic screening of potential donors still doesn't control for the randomness of which portion of a person's DNA went into each egg. But that will become a solvable problem. Fertilization of multiple eggs and genetic testing of each embryo is already possible today. Once we know what thousands of genetic variations do to determine IQ, personality, physical attractiveness, and many other attributes screening of multiple embryos will become very desirable. At that point expect to see skyrocketing prices for donor eggs with the most desired attributes. [More]

While we built a moral Maginot line to defend against government-sponsored eugenics, we ignored the power of science to make a desirable end a market commodity.